The Twelve Days of NEIL!
by Tinian I'att
Summary: Neil won't stop singing "The Twelve Days of Christmas" and it's beginning to drive the other heroes crazy. It's time to take action...drastic action.


**A/N: This is a humorous little Christmas one-shot I thought up. I hope you enjoy it.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Class of the Titans or the Twelve Days of Christmas.**

The Twelve Days of…NEIL!

Jay scanned the room frantically, desperately searching out a place to hide or a means of escape. Behind him, the sound of footsteps drew steadily nearer.

There was no place to hide, nowhere to run and then there was no time…

"On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me a partridge in a pear tree."

Jay sank to his knees, covering his ears as the air resounded with cries of,

"NEIL!"

"What?" came the injured sounding reply.

Jay sighed in frustration.

_That song_, he thought, _that stupid irritating, mindlessly repetitive, impossibly maddening, ridiculous, pointless, idiotic song_.

Jay, Odie, Herry, Atlanta, Archie and Theresa had tried everything they could think of to get Neil to stop singing it, threats, begging, bribery, but nothing worked.

_It all started so innocently_, Jay reflected.

Neil had come home from a trip to the mall with a CD entitled _Christmas Classics_. Apparently, he'd purchased it thinking it would be a great way to get everyone in the Christmas spirit. Unfortunately, for everyone else Neil failed to notice the title of the CD's final track… "The Twelve Days of Christmas".

When he'd arrived, back at the dorm Neil had eagerly placed his "find" in the stereo and turned it on. At first, everything was great. The whole gang enjoyed listening to such old favorites as "White Christmas", "Winter Wonderland", "Deck the Halls", "Jingle Bells", "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer", "Frosty the Snowman" and various others. Then "The Twelve Days of Christmas" started playing. Everyone groaned good-naturedly, but decided that there was no harm in letting the song play through to the end, once.

They turned off the CD when the song ended and everyone went about their business. The whole affair might have ended there except for one thing Neil decided he liked "The Twelve Days of Christmas". No one understood how anyone, even Neil, could be perverse enough to enjoy such a maddeningly repetitive song, but Neil did.

The next day Neil put the CD into the stereo again, forwarded it to that song and set it to repeat. His friends put up with it briefly, but after the third repetition, their patience began to wear thin.

"Neil this song's beginning to get on my nerves could you please change the track?" Theresa requested.

"No way," Neil exclaimed, "I love this song!"

After the sixth repetition…

"Hey Neil, would you mind putting something else on this song's really starting to bug me," Odie complained.

"Aw, come on, how can you not love this song?" Neil demanded.

After the ninth repetition…

"Seriously man can we please listen to something else?" Herry begged.

"Forget it Herry," Neil answered, "my CD, my choice."

After the twelfth repetition…

"Neil if you don't shut that racket off right now, I'm gonna take that CD and break it in half!" Archie exclaimed.

"Yeah come on Neil enough is enough," Atlanta chimed in.

"What's the matter with you guys?" Neil asked. "This is a great song!"

"No, it's an annoying song!" Archie fired back.

"Archie's right," Atlanta agreed, "it's just the same words repeated over and over. What's so great about that?"

No one noticed that during this argument Jay had slipped off the couch and headed for the stereo. Neil had just started to extol what he felt were the many virtues of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" when he noticed that the song hadn't started again.

"Hey!" he exclaimed turning toward the stereo. "What gives?"

"I think we've all had enough of that song for one day Neil," Jay explained patiently. "Why don't you put the CD away for now?"

Neil snatched the CD from Jay's outstretched hand and stalked up to his room muttering something about no one appreciating good music these days while Jay sat down to a chorus of thank yous.

"I don't understand why Neil's so crazy about that song," Theresa said.

"It's Neil," Jay replied. "Nobody understands him. Sometimes I wonder if Neil understands himself."

"I doubt it," Archie scoffed.

The next few days were blissfully quiet and everyone began to think that perhaps even Neil had grown weary of "The Twelve Days of Christmas", but it was just the calm before the storm.

Neil was determined to make the others see just how wonderful "The Twelve Days of Christmas" really was. The first part of his plan was simple he listened to the song over and over until he had it memorized, which wasn't difficult since as Atlanta had pointed out the words kept repeating.

The second part of his plan, however, was considerably more difficult to implement. The second phase involved finding and taking every opportunity to sing "The Twelve Days of Christmas" in the presence of his friends.

At first, Neil's incredibly good luck aided him immensely. Whenever someone turned on the radio whether in Herry's truck or at the dorm "The Twelve Days of Christmas" began to play, the same thing happened when they went to the mall, no sooner did Neil set foot inside then the sound system began belting out the irritating holiday tune.

Unfortunately, for Neil, these circumstances did not help as much as he'd hoped. Every time the song came on the radio, they turned it off. When the mall sound system played it, Jay, Odie, Herry, Atlanta, Archie and Theresa moved faster so they could escape the mall sooner. Everyone was getting their Christmas shopping done in record time, but Neil's grand scheme was turning out to be a dismal failure.

Then the blizzard hit.

It was the first day of Christmas Vacation. The heroes had planned to do a little last minute shopping, but had to cancel those plans when they awoke to a world blotted out by whirling snow.

Herry went outside to plug in his truck and Theresa's car, only to return a short time later looking like the Abominable Snowman.

"It's no use," he sighed, brushing snow from his coat. "I can't even see the garage much less get to it. We'll just have to hope it dies down soon."

They waited for one hour, then two, then three. By lunchtime, it was clear the storm had absolutely no intention of dying down anytime soon. In fact, it actually seemed to be getting worse.

"So much for afternoon training," Jay commented as two o'clock came and went with no sign of a let up.

"At least some good's coming out of this," Archie quipped. He felt they ought to have a break from training as well as school.

"You don't think Cronus could be behind this do you?" Jay asked.

The looks he got in response all but screamed, "Stop obsessing over Cronus already!"

"Okay, okay," Jay exclaimed raising his hands to protect himself from the glares, his friends were sending him. "Sheesh, it was just a question."

"I think Cronus has better things to do then turn New Olympia into a winter wonderland," Theresa pointed out.

Jay resisted the urge to remind her that turning New Olympia into a snowbound wasteland was exactly the sort of thing Cronus would do.

In the end, the heroes decided that whether or not Cronus was responsible for the snow there was nothing they could do until the storm stopped so they settled in to wait.

By the next day, the storm was still raging with no letup in sight. The heroes were beginning to wonder when the storm would end, but they all figured it had to be soon. No storm could last forever after all.

Could it?

When the next day dawned to a world of whirling white, the heroes started to wonder. Things got worse that afternoon when the power, which had remarkably held up in spite of all the snow, finally died. This meant no TV, DVDs, and CDs, radio, video games, computer games or Internet. Odie's laptop still worked, but Jay recommended keeping it turned off to conserve battery power.

"We don't know how long this storm's going to last," he pointed out. "So we need to make sure we have at least one way of communicating with the outside world."

Everyone else agreed with Jay. The storm could last for days and even after it ended, they would be trapped by all the snow that was accumulating outside, so it made sense to ensure they could contact the gods in case of an emergency.

By the next afternoon tempers were beginning to flare and Neil wasn't helping. In fact, Neil was making things worse, a lot worse.

Every time Neil entered a room, he would start singing "The Twelve Days of Christmas". He'd been doing this since the storm started, but now there was no way to drown him out. Before the power failure Jay, Odie, Herry, Atlanta, Archie and Theresa had simply turned up the volume on the TV or stereo so they couldn't hear Neil's stupid singing. Now though, they had to put up with it constantly and nothing they did would get him to stop. They had even tried earplugs, but had had to discard them when they realized they couldn't hear each other.

Finally, they concluded that the only option available was hiding. Whenever they heard Neil coming, they'd duck behind couches and chairs, under beds or in closets anything to avoid hearing another repetition of that song.

Unfortunately, Neil remained oblivious to the fury he was engendering in his friends and things had reached the breaking point.

It was the fifth day since the storm started and it looked like it was finally ending. Almost everyone was in the living room when they heard Neil humming "The Twelve Days of Christmas". Everyone moved swiftly to places of concealment hoping to forestall another rendition of the song. Poor Jay, however, was unable to hide before Neil strolled into the room cheerfully singing the much-loathed Christmas song.

As the air around him exploded with cries of,

"NEIL!"

Jay realized that he too had had more than enough of the blonde model's irritating new hobby. It was time to take action.

Drastic action.

Archie and Atlanta popped up from behind the couch while Odie peered out from behind a chair, Theresa climbed out of the hall closet and Herry appeared from the kitchen. Jay got to his feet and they all converged on Neil. Each one of them was determined to put a stop to Neil's incessant singing by any means necessary.

Herry wrapped his massive arms around Neil's much smaller frame lifting him bodily from the floor. Ignoring Neil's protests the muscle-bound youth carried him into the kitchen and dropped him unceremoniously into a chair. Meanwhile, Atlanta ran upstairs to get some rope and Archie hunted through the kitchen drawers for a roll of duct tape. In moments, they had Neil tied securely to a chair with a strip of tape across his mouth. Then they hauled him out to the living room where everyone sat and enjoyed the silence. At last, they were free of Neil's continual singing.

They left Neil to stew for a couple of hours before giving him an ultimatum.

"We'll untie you," Jay informed him, "if you promise to stop singing that song and never mention it again. Are you willing to accept our terms?"

Neil's head bobbed up and down emphatically.

"All right we'll let you go," Jay said, "but if you start this again you won't get off so easily."

Once he was free, Neil immediately started to complain.

"You guys need to lighten up," he whined. "The song's not that bad."

The other heroes exchanged glances. Maybe Neil had a point. It was possible they'd overreacted, but between being cooped up for five days and having to listen to Neil singing "The Twelve Days of Christmas" repeatedly they'd all just lost it.

"Tell you what Neil," Theresa offered. "Why don't we all sing "The Twelve Days of Christmas" together, just once, and then we can put all this behind us?"

Neil's face brightened considerably at this idea, but everyone else looked less than thrilled.

"Theresa can we speak to you in the other room for a minute?" Atlanta asked.

Everyone but Neil filed out of the room to have a chat with Theresa about her plan.

"What were you thinking?" Atlanta hissed.

"Yeah," Archie demanded. "There is no way I'm singing that stupid song!"

"Would you rather listen to Neil's whining?" Theresa inquired.

The heroes exchanged glances and quickly decided that Theresa was right. Anything was better than listening to Neil whine, even singing "The Twelve Days of Christmas". Everyone muttered reluctant agreements and headed back into the living room.

Neil arranged everyone to his satisfaction then stood in front of them with his arms raised like a conductor and after much irritable shifting and grumbling they were ready to begin. At first, they sang unenthusiastically. After a few verses, however, they began to warm up to the idea until by the end they were all belting out the lines at full volume.

"On the twelfth day of Christmas

My true love sent to me

Twelve lords a-leaping,

Eleven pipers piping,

Ten drummers drumming,

Nine ladies dancing,

Eight maids a-milking,

Seven swans a-swimming,

Six geese a-laying,

Five golden rings,

Four calling birds,

Three French hens,

Two turtledoves,

And a partridge in a pear tree."

"One more time."

"NEIL!"

"Just kidding."

**A/N: I don't exactly dislike "The Twelve Days of Christmas", but I do think it would get very annoying if you had to listen to it repeatedly. I also did the math and if you got everything on this list every day it's mentioned you'd end up with 12 partridges in 12 pear trees, 22 turtledoves, 30 French hens, 36 calling birds, 40 golden rings, 42 geese a-laying, 42 swans a-swimming, 40 maids a-milking, 36 ladies dancing, 30 drummers drumming, 22 pipers piping and 12 lords a-leaping. What in heaven's name would you do with that mass of people and all those flocks of birds? Well, I hope you liked it and will be kind enough to leave me a review. Merry Christmas!**


End file.
